Malawi's Abortion Stigma Wrecks Marriages
Dr. Chisale Mhango, a prominent gynaecologist and obstetrician, agrees that the stigma surrounding abortion is a major problem.
LILONGWE, Malawi — Stigma surrounding abortion and barrenness in Malawi is wreaking havoc on marriages, with some couples even resorting to divorce after a woman is unable to conceive, writes Francis Tayanjah-Phiri.
Eneless, a 25-year-old woman from Lilongwe, knows the devastating consequences of this social injustice firsthand. She survived a backroom abortion while in high school, but years later, the experience continued to haunt her.
"I thanked God for saving my life, after losing a lot of blood, but little did I know this would haunt my entire life," she says.
After completing her education, Eneless married her college sweetheart, Joel.
They had high hopes for their future together, but their marriage took a turn for the worse when Eneless was unable to conceive.
“I love you, my wife, and I want you to bear me girls as beautiful as you,” her husband had told her before they were married. But, four years into their marriage, no child had arrived.
The pressure from Joel’s family to have children mounted. They urged Joel to “try elsewhere,” eventually leading to a bitter divorce.
“With that, came the pressures and resentment from the man’s family, and indeed other relations,” Eneless says.
“And out of the same pressure, parents to the loving husband Joel encouraged him to ‘try elsewhere’; and the positive result out of the matrimonial home, became the genesis of more troubles for Eneless, later ending in a bitter divorce.”
Eneless’s story is not unique. Many Malawian women are facing similar struggles, often as a result of unsafe abortions.
A couple, who already had three children, decided they did not want more. They went to a hospital to request an abortion but were denied because, under the current law, there was no acceptable reason for termination.
Desperate, the woman confided in friends.
A neighbour suggested a private clinic where she had previously had an abortion. The couple, unable to afford the high cost, turned to a traditional healer. The woman suffered severe complications, losing a significant amount of blood.
"They rushed to a local public hospital, where her womb was removed," says Senior Chief Chikumbu of Mulanje, a Safe Motherhood and Sexual Rights Advocate.
"As soon as she lost her womb, her husband of 3 children divorced her.”
“It is a fact that many marriages are being broken because a woman is not able to bear children because, at a point in time in her past, aborted using an unsafe procedure that affected her uterus, with some having the organ entirely removed,” Chief Chikumbu explains.
Chief Chikumbu, who is also a Justice Ambassador of the ‘Mwana wa Mzako Ngwako Yemwe Campaign'—a national campaign that promotes each girl’s right to a healthy and safe sexual and reproductive health future—says she has personally presided over couples’ disputes in which men seek divorce because their wives cannot conceive.
“These women become a subject of social injustice, they are rebuked in society and even subjected to some dirty ways by traditional healers, in their quest to bear children. But mostly, you find that these women are those that had clandestine abortions at one point in time,” she says.
Chief Chikumbu advocates for the availability of medically safe ways of terminating pregnancies.
“As a traditional leader, I have tried to counsel some couples against divorcing, just because they failed to conceive; but in other cases, it has failed. And this has a long-time psychological repulsion on the woman,” she says.
Dr. Chisale Mhango, a prominent gynaecologist and obstetrician, agrees that the stigma surrounding abortion is a major problem.
“Safe abortion avoids these complications and therefore affords women the dignity of managing their reproductive choices,” he says.
Mhango emphasizes the importance of providing safe and legal abortion services.
“Sadly, the men in Malawi think ‘without a womb, there is no marital’ [obligation]," he says, referring to the common belief that a woman's value is tied to her ability to bear children.
The current situation, where women are forced to resort to unsafe abortions, perpetuates a cycle of suffering and social injustice.
The stories of Eneless and other women in Malawi highlight the urgent need for a review of the law on abortion and a shift in societal attitudes.
“Because illegal abortion happens in an unsterile environment outside the hospital, the commonest complication is infection in the womb,” says Mhango.
“The products of pregnancy that remain in the womb are a culture medium that makes the bacteria multiply very fast and ascend into the tubes. The infection in the tubes causes pus, which even after antibiotic treatment blocks the tubes permanently so that eggs from the ovaries are not able to meet the male partner’s sperm, so the woman is not able to become pregnant again.”
Mhango shares a harrowing experience from his time working as an obstetrician in England: “When I worked in England as an obstetrician in the 80s, most women coming for the delivery of their first babies gave a history of having an average of two terminations of pregnancy before this 3rd pregnancy; there was no stigma associated with these abortions.”
He recounts an incident at the hospital where they received a woman from Chikwawa who had laboured for two days with a traditional birth attendant (TBA).
“She had many internal examinations to find out whether the passage was opening to allow the baby to come out, but there was to be progress. The TBA then tried to manipulate the womb externally to align the baby with the birth passage; in the process, she twisted the womb on itself to 180 degrees, and this obstructed the blood supply to the womb, so both the womb and the 9-month-old baby it the womb died,” he narrated, saying the woman became unconscious.
“When she regained her consciousness and discovered that she had no womb, she turned to her husband and said, "Now that I have no womb, you will leave me, won't you?
The response was not surprising to Malawian men: "Yes, I will leave you, but let's talk about that when we get home."